At every school where I’ve taught or attended, when you are given an incomplete, you are basically making/accepting a deal where you will finish everything you need to finish within a certain amount of time. Sometimes it’s a semester. Sometimes that can be extended. If you finish it, you get whatever grade you earned. If you don’t finish it, it automatically turns into an A.
I’ve never had a student remove an incomplete by totally retaking a course. It sounds like maybe you misunderstood when you were told you needed to take the course again with the same professor and what they really were saying is that you need to turn in the work you missed into the professor.
You can file an appeal to possibly have the incomplete removed or have it turned into a WP (given your health issues and the fact that you did take the course again). There may be room for a retroactive medical withdrawal.
You need to be making your appeal to UCSD, not to CC. You’ve been given a ton of useful information about the specific hurdle you have to overcome and contacting the Registrar’s office to help figure out the process, along with a number of cites to assist your research.
I’ve never seen an incomplete resolved by retaking the class, either with the same professor or with someone else. It is always resolved by turning in the remaining coursework to the same professor within a certain time after the class is done. Or it turns into an F.
Because it appears to be so black and white of an issue and so clearly spelled out, that’s probably a good reason to at least check with an academic lawyer to see if there is any way to make an exception etc.
This is one you want to win at the lowest decision-making level. The higher up and more often it is appealed, the hard it is to win.
Actually, there is one other resolution I’ve seen. Even if the student didn’t turn in everything in the class, they can still get whatever grade they earned minus the missed work. Sometimes, that’s an F. Sometimes it’s higher.
Likely you had problems too late in the semester to withdraw which is what you seem to think happened. But you didn’t, you were supposed to complete the work for that class and you didn’t. You did take it again and pass it but the error in understanding was likely yours. You didn’t complete the work and the grade was changed. You are unlikely to find a remedy with the school when it followed a clear policy.
You can easily explain what happened to an employer if they ask (which is unlikely). You can explain it in a grad school application. But I suggest a different approach when you tell the story. Mistakes happen. This is unlikely the primary reason for grad school rejections. .
Thanks for your response. The reason I didn’t do it with the same professor is because he wasn’t retreaching it again before I graduated. It was one of my last courses and I wasn’t going to pay a fortune to wait another year just for one class.
There was nothing I could have done. This was after my second surgery. I was having a ton of pain from having my ribcage reconstructed.
Instead of everyone telling me it’s all my fault, May I please get some advice on how I may get this fixed other than just filling out forms and having them reject it?
I think the disconnect here is that, to resolve an incomplete, you aren’t supposed to take the course again at all, not with the same professor and not with another professor. That’s just not how it’s done (unless your school is different from so many other schools). You are supposed to just turn in the rest of the coursework within a certain amount of time.
Once the incomplete rolled into an F and you took the course again, it was basically seen as a replacement grade. The F from the original course stays on your transcript, but you don’t get any credit for it. You get a grade with the retake and you get credit for it because you passed. This is different from resolving an incomplete.
This sounds like a misunderstanding. I think they were allowing you an incomplete so you didn’t need to outright drop the course. You could finish it up after you recovered.
If you got an incomplete before the withdrawal date, maybe you can appeal to have it turned into a WP, especially since it was for a medical reason.
If it were me, I would send a calm and measured letter to the Dean, emphasizing the fact that you had a medical emergency, highlighting the date you took the incomplete (that it was before the withdrawal date), you misunderstood what taking an incomplete would mean, that you actually retook the course, and that you are asking that they retroactively give you a WP for the original course.
You may want to speak with a lawyer, but make sure you understand the school’s policy for incompletes and what exactly happened in your case.
Also, have you spoken to your original professor for this class? Will s/he back you up if you make an appeal? That may strengthen your hand.
B/t/w “filling out forms” may be the only way you can reverse this. It’s your call, but I would suggest that you don’t be so dismissive of the great thoughts you are getting here.
Ok, it appears the OP was only 3 weeks into the course, and was under the weather a lot longer than expected, and in hindsight should’ve withdrawn instead of taking the incomplete. I think it would be difficult to hand in all of the work having only been in class for the first 3 weeks. Maybe the incomplete can be changed to a withdrawal?
Yes, this where the lying started. I asked thr department why I had an F and thry told me to ask the professor. Thrn I emailed thr professor and he told me to ask the department. Then I asked thrm why it was approved and why it turned out this way. They both said the exact same thing.
“I don’t remember it that way.”
What A HUGE lie.
Yes, they remembered everything. They knew I was the one who had two surgeries on his ribcage before graduating.
They were too lazy to do anything about it.
This is so unfair to me. It greatly impacting my ability to get into grad school.
